Silver Efex artifacts

Piezography Professional Tools
1

I don’t normally use Silver Efex, but a client gave me some files that they had edited with Silver Efex. Has anyone experienced artifacts or strange tonal transitions when using this plugin?

The file processed with Silver Efex looks decent until I turn on the soft proof and then I can see some odd transitions from deep shadows into blacks. (I haven’t tried printing it yet, so it may not print with the artifacts.)

I can edit the raw file pretty easily to match the Nik output, but if Silver Efex gets us there quicker, I’d consider integrating it into our workflow.

2

SFx absolutely screws up images. I counsel people to run far away from this “plugin”

 

best,

Walker

3

Hi, can you elaborate on this a bit more?

thanks

4

Basically it works on a tonal-selection process but these tonal selections really can’t be toe’d properly so what ends up happening is tonal degradation (banding, noise) that is hard to see until you print.

-Walker

5

Hi and thanks for reply,

good to know.

I have used a lot in the past, it is good for creating an image quickly, but have been moving over to using
B&W Artisan Pro
Quick Mask Pro
from bwvision.com. This is longer process though.